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Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
He was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, and poet, who exerted an incredible amount of influence on Wester Art. So well known, even a ninja turtle was named after him! Research Michelangelo lived a relatively long life and much of it was documented in his letters. “Michelangelo’s correspondence spans sixty-seven years, totaling 1,390 letters, about 500 of which were written by the artist; the others are addressed to him” (Parker) and with such a rich amount of personal correspondence, biographies have a great deal of truism. Michelangelo is a world-renown artist, and he was “skilled in every art and craft, his work would serve to show world how to achieve perfection in art” (Paolucci 3). He was a great influence to his time in all forms of art, and he is an extremely interesting individual. His personal life is somewhat shrouded in mystery, but his works are amazing. Focusing on his major works and contributions to the world of art will show how incredibly talented Michelangelo was, and how he became an influential individual in history. His biographers and biographies have elevated him to almost mythical proportions: Although Michelangelo was a real person who fought with his brothers, rebuked his father, chided his nephew, mocked his rivals, …and suffered from kidney stones, he nevertheless exists in our imagination largely as a mythic being. We do not much think of the real Michelangelo, for example, eating with pleasure the marzolino cheese, sausages, and ravioli, … instead we picture him, as his biographers did mythopoetically, partaking sacra-mentally only of bread and wine. (Barolsky) Michelangelo was, however, a normal man, and he lived a relatively normal life. He was successful though very early on in his career as an artist and that success lead to his celebrity status later in life. It was because of his extreme talent and celebrity-like status that he became one of the most influential artists of the Renaissance Period. One of his earliest works is the well-known Pieta which was completed in 1499''.It was sculpted in fewer than two years’ time from a single block of marble, and Michelangelo was quite young still at the time of its completion “Michelangelo must have been aware of this extraordinary technical prowess, achieved at the age of twenty-three” (Tartuferi 40). The technical prowess mentioned is a reference to Michelangelo’s ability to see a finished sculpture within a formless block of mineral, and then his ability to bring the statue to completion with beautiful detail. Extraordinarily talented for his age, and a master of his craft, Michelangelo continued his career as an artist and his next work would arguably be his most-famous piece. Michelangelo’s ''David was completed just 5 years later in 1504. “The [David] has become one of the universal symbols of art history of all time,” (Tartuferi 18) and it is continually visited by crowds of people to admire its beauty. Michelangelo was still under thirty years of age when he completed the piece and it has become a huge symbol in even modern society. Vasari once said in reference to this statue in particular: “whoever has seen [the David], need see no other sculpture ever made now or at any other time by any other artist” (Tartuferi 18). With the amount of positive criticism flowing from Giorgio Vasari’s mouth, and Michelangelo’s own fictitious autobiographies, it is not difficult to see why he had reached such an elevated place in the heart of his followers and fans. “Michelangelo's autobiography, like Vasari's biography, brims with fiction. He pretends outrageously, for example, that he gave to Pope Julius II the very idea of completing the new church of St. Peter's to accommodate the gigantic tomb that he was commissioned to make of the Pope” (Barolsky). The two men’s fictitious accounts of Michelangelo’s life are commonly accepted as truth and their imaginings and musings are forgiven as literary artifice. Four years after the David’s completion, Michelangelo would begin working on his masterpiece, the Sistine Chapel Frescoes. With TheCreation of Adam and The Last Judgment among the works in the chapel, Michelangelo solidified his place as a master artist. He began working on the monumental task of painting ceilings of the Sistine Chapel in 1508, but would not paint The Last Judgment on the walls for another twenty years. The Frescoes were finished in 1512, four years total, which a break taken in 1510. His works remain to this day a common place of pilgrimage to tourists from around the world, but the frescoes are especially renowned. Michelangelo did have a number of assistants helping him paint, but none of their works compare to his which were “of a constantly high level, unattainable by any other artist” (Tartuferi 64). Tartuferi notes that Michelangelo would eventually send many of his assistants away when the work became too difficult and to a level that he must complete himself. His efforts paid off for “the influence that Michelangelo had on his contemporaries becomes more than evident” and they were “not only influenced in formal terms but also … by his use of color.” (Tartuferi 64). Tartuferi also explains that Michelangelo’s exuberant use of color shown in The Last Judgment shows the artists changing sensibility which came about as a result of his schooling in Venice. As an artist, Michelangelo never ceased to learn. He was constantly bettering himself, and his techniques. He became a master of his craft at such a young age, and his skill was unrivaled at the time. His most important pieces live on to this day, and remain some of the most awe-inspiring pieces of art that exist in the modern world. He lived what must have been an incredible life filled with not only his extreme success, but also the normality of life that is not always attributed to him. While much is known about this incredible man, there still remains much that is not and will probably never be known, and that is for the best. To know every minute detail of his life would remove the shroud of mystery for him, and would lessen the mythic proportion that he is considered to have even to this day. He was an incredible figure in history, and will forever be so. Works Cited Barolsky, Paul. "The Metamorphoses Of Michelangelo." Virginia Quarterly Review: A National Journal Of Literature And Discussion 68.2 (1992): 208-217. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12 Apr. 2013. Paolucci, Antonio. "Introduction." Introduction. Michelangelo: Painter, Sculptor, and Architect. Rome: A.TS Italia Editrice, 2004. 3-4. Print. Parker, Deborah. "The Role Of Letters In Biographies Of Michelangelo." Renaissance Quarterly 58.1 (2005): 91-126. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12 Apr. 2013. Tartuferi, Angelo. Michelangelo: Painter, Sculptor, and Architect. Rome: A.TS Italia Editrice, 2004. Print. Personal Life Pretty much chaste, might have been gay. So mysterious. Category:Research Pages Category:Italian Art Category:Works Cited